


You and the Tree and Me

by traptrixnepenthes



Category: Tales of Symphonia
Genre: Gen, also: dotnw? idk her, takes place post-game, this is not a happy fic but it is something about growth in the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 03:21:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29482872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/traptrixnepenthes/pseuds/traptrixnepenthes
Summary: i've been thinking a lot about phantasia and symphonia lately, mostly in the context of them being interconnected. there's something very cyclical about the three heroes of these games, and how cress's story is a retreading of lloyd's story which is a retreading, in the end, of mithos's story. not just in terms of what kind of people they are, but in terms of everything that happened to them, and their reasons for being heroes in the first place.here is a story not about any of those heroes, but about one of those cycles being broken.
Relationships: Genis Sage/Mithos Yggdrasill, Lloyd Irving & Genis Sage
Kudos: 6





	You and the Tree and Me

When Lloyd finally found the clearing the Seed had taken root in again--a surprising amount of the wreckage of the Tower had already been overtaken by nature, and already a small field of grass and wildflower buds were poking up where there’d been nothing but barren dirt before--he saw Genis sitting near the middle of it, looking like he was in a trance. The tree was still small, barely more than a sapling, and Genis was staring at it, his knees pulled up to his chest, all alone out here.

"Genis?"

It took a couple seconds for him to react, and then he looked up to Lloyd and smiled like nothing was wrong. "Oh, hey, Lloyd. Did my sister tell you where I was?"

Lloyd jogged over to him, and once he was close enough, Genis turned back to the tree. "Yeah, she did. She's, uh...she's pretty worried about you."

Genis didn't say anything in reply at first, just hugged his legs tighter to his chest, staring at the tree again. "...Remember what you told me about this tree?"

Of course he did. It had just been a theory, really. An assumption that he’d made, watching those specks of light flow into the Great Seed so high above the world. If Mithos’s crystal had broken, and the shards had joined with his own Exsphere, and then those shards had gone to the Seed, then that must have meant Mithos went with them, right? So he was the reason that the Seed had germinated, in the end. The mana from Derris-Kharlan helped, of course, but it probably wouldn’t have gotten kickstarted if Mithos hadn’t stepped in first.

When the seed sprouted, Martel had separated from it, and when he’d gotten to talk to her it didn’t sound like Mithos had come with her. Maybe she just didn’t know he had, or something like that, but she seemed to recognize all the other consciousnesses that had become the spirit she was now, so that seemed pretty unlikely, too. Mithos was somewhere in the tree itself, helping it grow little by little.

_Obviously_ the first thing Lloyd did once he figured that out was tell Genis. What else was he gonna do, not tell his best friend about it? Mithos had been important to Genis in a lot of ways that Lloyd never had been, and even as strong as Genis was--and he was _so_ amazingly strong, being able to have to deal with the death of someone so important to him like that, even Lloyd himself hadn’t been able to come to terms with the idea of Colette dying--he knew that his friend was still hurting. It just, you know, felt like the right thing to do.

Clearly it hadn’t been.

"...Yeah," Lloyd said. "About how Mithos is probably still part of the tree."

"While me and Raine were traveling, I started thinking about that." There was a note in Genis's voice that Lloyd had never heard before. It was happy, somehow, but in a far-off way. Happy in a way that felt miles away from where anyone else was supposed to be. "Exsphere shards are physical objects, right? So if it were possible to extract them from the tree and reassemble his crystal, then..."

Lloyd watched as Genis gently touched one of the tree's leaves, as gently and lovingly as if it were someone's hand. "Genis, that's not…” Lloyd shook his head. “Genis, Mithos is dead."

"He's _not!_ You were the one who said he was still alive. He's in the tree like Martel was, and--"

"Genis--"

"--if I can just put his crystal back together and then give him a new body, then--"

" _Genis!_ " Lloyd didn't like raising his voice at his best friend, much less when he was clearly still upset, but watching him get worked up over something impossible like that felt even worse. "You know Mithos tried to do that, too. And he failed."

"He _didn't_ fail. Martel just didn't want to come back." Genis was talking like a petulant child--well, he _was_ a petulant child. He'd lost someone incredibly important to him, the same way Mithos had, and now he was getting the same crazy ideas in his head, and Lloyd needed to stop him the same way Kratos had failed to stop Mithos. "I'm sure if I succeeded, then Mithos would..."

" _No,_ Genis. It's not going to work. You can't even know for sure if he's really even in there."

"But what if--"

"Genis!" He grabbed his friend by the shoulder and jerked him away from the sapling, maybe a little too roughly, so that he'd stop looking at the tree and instead look Lloyd in the eye. "You _know_ what Mithos did. Are you willing to sacrifice who knows how many people just for something that might not even work right? And would Mithos even _want_ you to sacrifice those people for him?"

"I--" Genis broke himself off, and then took a deep, shaky breath. He was on the verge of tears. Lloyd hated to see him like that, but Kratos not being firm enough with Mithos when Martel died was what had led to all of this, and he couldn't let that cycle start all over again. "I just...want to see him again."

"...I know you do." Lloyd let go of Genis and sat down next to him. Genis turned back to the tree again, but at least this time he wasn’t bunching himself up into a little ball. "I want to, too. I need to apologize for not realizing there could've been another way until it was too late."

They sat together quietly for a while, simply watching the sapling and its delicate branches as they moved and swayed in the breeze. It had only been a few weeks since it sprouted, but it was already noticeably taller and more robust; its leaves were a vivid green and its bark was starting to look like a normal tree's. He could definitely understand how it felt so convincing that there was someone in there encouraging it to grow.

But even if Mithos was in there somewhere, that didn't mean Lloyd could just let Genis try to...make the same mistakes he had. That wasn't what friends did. Sometimes, loving someone meant telling them no.

"Lloyd, do you remember what Mithos said before you…"

_Before you killed him, because I told you to._ Lloyd just nodded. He didn’t need to reply to the rest of that. "That stuff about his shadow, and how he'd always choose the same path?"

"He was lying about that, I think."

Lloyd blinked. "What makes you say that?"

“Can you…” Genis looked up at him, a little apprehensive. "...You can keep a secret from Raine, right?"

"What, like I haven't kept stuff from her before? Don't worry about it."

Genis nodded, looking grateful, and then carefully pulled a very familiar flute from his pocket. It was the one Mithos had given him ages ago as a protective charm, and had called the spirit Aska to protect them--and then it broke, never to be used again. They'd given it back to Mithos when they saw him again after that, so when had Genis picked it up again? And...why was he carrying it with him like this?

Actually, scratch that last one. Stupid question. "What about the flute?"

"Remember? He said this was his sister's."

"Yeah, Martel made it for him."

"And...remember how it broke? I was the one who broke it. You'd think that Mithos would've gotten angry at me for that if he really was prioritizing Martel over everything else, but he didn't." Genis dragged his finger down a jagged crack in one of the reeds. "He didn’t get angry at all. He said his memories of her were enough. I don't think he could've lied about that, since she was so important to him, but that'd mean that…"

Lloyd looked at the flute. He hadn’t thought much of the gesture at all back then. It was the same thing he would’ve done, after all. "It'd mean he'd already chosen a path that didn't have reviving her at the end of it?"

"Yeah."

Lloyd sat with that one for a while. He hadn't really gotten to know Mithos as well as Genis had, and he sure didn't have an encyclopedic memory for every single word that had come out of his mouth, either. If Genis was going to frame it that way, then it _did_ make sense, but… "Why did he lie to us, then?"

Genis dropped his chin onto his knees. "...He wanted to die, I think. That's why I told you to kill him. He must've thought that was the only way to atone for his crimes, and that's why he kept rejecting us when we said there had to be another way…"

"...That wasn't your fault, Genis. If his mind was made up, then there wasn't anything you could do, you know?"

Genis opened his mouth to say something in reply, and then closed it, still looking at the flute. It was another few moments before he said anything, and even then, his voice was quiet. "...Maybe if I just believed in him a little more...or if I just tried a little harder to get him to understand…"

He'd never talked about this before, not with Lloyd or with anyone else, as far as he knew. Genis was never really good at opening up or being honest about stuff like this in the first place, not til Mithos showed up like a whirlwind in his life and even Lloyd had been able to see how attached Genis had gotten, and now that he wasn’t part of his life anymore, Lloyd honestly didn't know how Genis was going to recover from all of this. Maybe he never would. But if Genis needed support, Lloyd was going to give it to him--that was an easy decision to make.

So he put a hand on Genis's shoulder and said, "If his mind was made up, then it was made up. I mean, he was practically as stubborn as I am, and you _know_ how well your attempts at getting me to change my mind go."

That finally got a bit of a real smile out of him. Just a little one, but it was good enough. "Yeah. You're both...complete idiots. But I guess that's why I like both of you, too."

"...That didn't feel like much of a compliment."

"Oh, don't worry. This time, it was one."

They fell quiet again for a while, the conversation ending naturally. It was hard to really know where to go from there anyways. So Lloyd sat there, next to his best friend, in front of the grave of someone very, very precious to said friend, and wondered what it would be like if Mithos--the real thing, not this tree--was here with them, too.

"...So, what are you going to do now, Genis? Are you going to go back with Raine? That’s what she told me to tell you to do."

"Hmm…" Genis was still staring at the flute. "I think I want to stay here for a while."

"Like, _here,_ here?” Lloyd looked around them. There was nothing here at all beyond the wreckage of the Tower of Salvation, and the nearest town was Mizuho, and that was still a two-days-worth journey from here. “Like, in the middle of absolutely nowhere all on your own?"

"Jeez, Lloyd. I’ve already been out here for a while anyways. Have you no faith in me?"

"I _do,_ but that doesn't mean I'm not gonna be worried about you getting mauled by a wild animal or something!"

"Well, nothing comes close to the tree anyways. I think all the wildlife knows not to hurt it." Genis just brushed off his worries like they were nothing. That did not make Lloyd feel any better about any of this, least of all the state of mind Genis was in. "I'll be fine...probably. I can take care of myself better than Raine can."

"But...what about her? How's she gonna manage without you?"

"...She's an adult," Genis said, and his tone didn't match the small smile on his face. "She'll be able to figure things out. She actually _likes_ the things she cooks, so as long as she doesn't feed them to anyone else, it'll be fine."

Genis had done this before, on the final path through Welgaia to Mithos. It was like he was intentionally pushing Lloyd away, trying to cut him off in favor of Mithos, and he really didn't know how he felt about that. At the time, Genis had said that the only one who needed to feel sorry for Mithos was himself, and Lloyd had taken it the way it had been intended: he needed to focus, not get caught up in worrying too much about someone who was without a doubt the worst criminal the planet had ever seen. But seeing Genis now, feeling how there was a wall being carefully built between them, there had been more to it. He should've paid more attention to how Genis felt back then, and maybe if he had, this wall between them wouldn't exist now.

"Genis."

"Yeah?"

"You know that if you're ever worried or anything, or if you need help or something, you can come to me, okay?"

"Of course I do. Even if it's mostly going the other way around…"

" _Hey!_ That's not the point right now!" Genis laughed at him, and it was nice to feel that things had gone a little back to normal. "I'm saying you can rely on me, alright?"

"Yeah." Genis took a deep breath, and another long look at the tree. "I know. I just...he and I made a promise to each other."

Lloyd had watched that promise happen, hiding from them behind a rock, although he kind of wished he hadn't. It had been awkward to be an observer for it, like when he'd accidentally walked in on two of the older girls in Iselia confessing to each other in the schoolhouse because he'd _once again_ forgotten his homework at school. They were both promises not made lightly, and Lloyd had certainly seen how much that promise had ended up meaning to Genis. He'd even been willing to let Lloyd attack him, just so he could protect Mithos a little more.

So Lloyd just sighed. "Genis, as your best friend, I just wanna say that this time I think _you're_ the one being a stubborn idiot this time, but I probably can't change your mind, so instead I'm just gonna say I'll come visit you whenever I can, okay?"

Genis laughed again. "You really did rub off on me, huh? Took you long enough."

"I dunno if it was me.” Lloyd smiled, thinking of how the first real time he'd seen Genis stand out for his own sake, not because Lloyd made him, was so that he could protect Mithos. How the first real argument they'd ever had was because Genis had wanted to take Mithos's side on some level. “I think it was probably him instead."

"Yeah..." Genis sat back, holding the flute loosely in his hands, and looked up at the blue, blue sky. There wasn't a single cloud today. "Maybe it was."

Raine definitely wasn't going to be happy when she got the news that Lloyd hadn't been able to really do much about Genis, but he'd been scolded by her enough times in life that he could survive it happening again...probably. Hopefully. He could already hear her once again telling him that all of this was just unhealthy for a boy Genis's age, and even though he agreed, he would've had to've dragged Genis back home kicking and screaming with how he was acting right now. The best they could do was just keep checking up on him and making sure he was okay.

"Just promise me you aren't actually going to try to revive Mithos, okay?"

"All of Mithos's research on the subject left with Kratos on Derris-Kharlan, so it's not like I'd be able to, anyways."

"That didn't sound like a promise to me."

"...Can we change the subject?"

Lloyd sighed. "You know, you're really smart, but you're pretty stupid too, Genis."

"Yeah, well.” Genis grinned. “Learned it from you."


End file.
